RAILROADS: ERIE'S FOURTH

A weary veteran of U. S. railroading is the bankrupt, 108-year-old Erie. In her
gilded years she fell in with bad companyflamboyant Jim Fisk,
piratical Jay Gould, pious Daniel Drew. Together they manipulated her
back and forth from bonanza to bankruptcy, got her known as the
"Scarlet Lady of Wall Street." Exhausted, the Erie had collapsed three
times by 1895. Then she reformed. Under Van Sweringen control, she
became a respectably operated road. But her capital structure never
really recovered from Jay Gould's attentions, and she never again paid
a dividend on the common. In 1938 Erie chugged into...